Debussy: 12 Etudes / Berg: Sonate Op. 1

Pollini devotes four-fifths of this disc to the 12 etudes of Claude Debussy, and impressively done they are. The remaining piece, which predates the Debussy by a few years, is Alban Berg's powerfully compressed one-movement Piano Sonata Op. 1--which already shows the 23-year-old composer's ability to reconcile the demands of form with the inherently volatile tendencies of an expressionistic musical idiom. Pollini's lean, rhythmically precise reading and hard, bright tone give the piece a remarkable intensity. The 1992 recording is direct and analytic, like the performance. --Ted Libbey